No health cover, no home, no money: The women forced to choose between their visa or their baby

In the searing Queensland heat, the Tongan man was forced to sit in the field, his pay docked for an hour. He was being punished for leaning instead of kneeling to bud young mandarin trees.

His employer had been watching him through his gun scope, the farm’s former workplace supervisor told the Herald and The Age.

“They would work until they couldn’t walk, their legs would seize up,” the supervisor said.

She said men often passed out and that she once had to perform CPR on a worker having a dehydration-induced heart attack.

The man was then flown home instead of being placed on WorkCover.

The supervisor resigned shortly afterwards. She requested anonymity to protect her future employment. The farm is now under new management.

Australia’s anti-slavery laws have been criticised by the United Nations following an in-country assessment, warning that Australia’s legal approach to protecting human rights is piecemeal.

The report, published last week by Tomoya Obokata, special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, found migrant workers face “alarming and sometimes severe patterns of exploitation” by employers, labour hire companies and migration agents.

Workers were exposed to deceptive recruitment, excessive wage deductions, hazardous working conditions, harassment, threats, violence and sexual assault, the report stated.

Stakeholders have told of women choosing abortions to keep their work visas, while the Herald and The Age have uncovered allegations of coerced marriage, while worker payslips have also revealed poor payment practices and inflated fees.

The PALM scheme is a temporary visa program for workers from Pacific Islands and Timor-Leste, with 31,500 employed, mainly in agriculture and meat processing.

Abortions with absence of choice

A NSW parliamentary inquiry into the risk of slavery for temporary migrant workers, held in June, was told that workers were choosing to have abortions to keep their work visas.

Trudi Beck, a Wagga GP, told a regional hearing in Griffith that about 95 per cent of visa workers she saw chose an abortion “not because of personal choice” but to keep their visas.

“They know that they will breach their visa requirements to be able to work – either because they’re in a physical job … or if they keep the baby, they will have to go home because they won’t be able to work as per the conditions of their visa,” she said.

‘Specifically for visa workers, I would say 95 per cent of the time they would pick a termination, and not because of personal choice.’

Dr Trudi Beck, Wagga GP

Former Leeton mayor Paul Mayton told the inquiry he had spoken to one woman who had left her job after becoming pregnant. Her income, accommodation and health cover were tied to the employer. She had no access to health services when she gave birth two months premature. With nowhere to stay, her baby was taken into state care. It was the second child she had in Australia that had been removed from her.

“She said, ‘I didn’t know what to do, Paul, because I have no money, so I agreed to it. But I want my babies back’,” Mayton told the inquiry.

Worker advocates Geoffrey and Jane Smith told this masthead they witnessed a coerced marriage on a farm in 2020. The employer, a preacher, allegedly told the couple they would lose their visas if they didn’t marry, and wouldn’t let the couple live together without the ceremony.

“We had to hastily prepare a wedding in a backyard. And it was a lovely day, but they still married under coercion,” Geoff said.

Australia’s Anti-Slavery Commissioner Chris Evans said 3000 PALM workers now in Australia had left their employers due to concerns.

“They are the truly vulnerable and are a major focus,” he said, calling for extra protection for the increasing number of women in the scheme.

Illegal deductions, surpluses charged

Illegal deductions, non-transparent payslips and surplus fees are a common practice among horticulture labour hire firms and employers, found a Fair Work report published in June.

Madec is one of Australia’s largest labour hire firms. In 2022-23, the registered charity made nearly $200 million in revenue, with 84 per cent generated from labour hire.

The company legally charges workers’ deductions for accommodation, transport, flights home, bed linen and kitchen utensils.

A Senate inquiry into job security heard evidence that one worker took home just over $100 a week after Madec’s deductions.

This masthead has reviewed a contract, signed late last year, between a PALM scheme worker from Vanuatu and Madec, showing a proposed deduction of $1900 for a “return international air fare and domestic travel”.

Return flights between Brisbane and Vanuatu, the worker’s home country, on average, cost between $550 and $800.

The worker was also charged $185 a week for accommodation, $50 a week for transport and one-off fees of $100 for bed linen, $200 for a mobile phone and SIM, and $60 for a refundable kitchen pack. Her take-home pay for the first three months of work was $224 a week.

In 2022, Madec was investigated by Victoria’s Labour Hire Authority for charging workers for substandard and overcrowded accommodation.

Madec agreed to repay workers a portion of their rent, and agreed to audit their processes of payment, deductions and accommodation standards.

Madec has been contacted for comment.

Similarly, this masthead has sighted a contract with McCrystal Farms in Bundaberg where hundreds of dollars were deducted from a workers’ pay for superannuation, with no details about the workers’ hourly rate or superannuation fund listed.

Last year, McCrystal faced legal action by the Fair Work Ombudsman for unlawfully fining workers $500 for drinking alcohol while on work site accommodation. The organisation charged 29 workers a total of $14,500 in three months. The Ombudsman also alleged the company charged workers inflated fees for health insurance.

McCrystal Farms has been contacted for comment.

Crackdown needed

NSW Anti-slavery Commissioner Dr James Cockayne said penalties weren’t strong enough to crack down on unscrupulous employers.

“The risks of serious penalty for engaging in these practices are so low that it is rational, from an economic perspective, to take that risk and engage in overcharging, deceptive recruitment and effective debt bondage of these workers,” he said.

Cockayne also called for the federal government to introduce legislation to allow workers to change employers more easily.

“It’s very difficult for people to switch employers … it’s an extremely long, complex [and] bureaucratic process. They end up very vulnerable, and in particular, vulnerable to exploitation once they’ve disengaged,” he said.

About one in five PALM workers are hired via a labour hire company.

Sixty-two PALM scheme workers died in Australia between June 2022 and August 2025.

A spokesperson for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations said the government takes the “welfare and wellbeing of PALM scheme workers seriously and continues to work with PALM scheme employers to promote safety”.

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